by Amira Rain
SPAWNED
BY THE BEAR
A PARANORMAL LOVE & PREGNANCY ROMANCE
AMIRA RAIN
Copyright ©2016 by Amira Rain
All rights reserved.
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About This Book
When Tara Fowler agreed to become a surrogate mother in order to earn money to pay off the mob so that they wouldn't kill her father she hoped it would be a reasonably simple deal.
However, Tara was totally unaware of two huge details.
One, that the baby was the spawn of a handsome WereBear named Warren.
And two, that she was also part of the deal....
This is a Paranormal Love & Pregnancy Romance with a twist. Enjoy amazing chemistry, sensual scenes and exciting adventures in this full length novel that is guaranteed to amaze!
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
They were coming.
They were members of the mob, I was pretty sure. My dad had described them as “really bad guys” and “organized guys,” though he hadn’t been able to say much else. As usual, he’d been so drunk while speaking that all his words had kind of run together, making them barely intelligible. It didn’t matter. I’d gotten the gist. Members of the mob were soon coming to our apartment because of a massive debt my dad owed to them.
They didn’t want money now, though, from what my dad had said, or at least they didn’t expect it. They knew he didn’t have any. Now they just wanted my dad. Specifically, they wanted his life. That was just how they operated. They’d given him multiple chances to pay up, and now they wanted to “collect” and be done with his debt by way of making an example out of him for other debtors.
He’d had a gambling problem for decades, probably since I’d been born. I couldn’t remember a time when my parents hadn’t had periodic fights about his gambling. However, my dad had always made pretty good money as owner of a large construction company. This had allowed him to more or less keep things under control with his problem, paying off some losses right away and making and keeping payment arrangements on others.
Whenever it came to light that he had lost big, my mom would yell at him, they’d fight, he’d promise to “cool it” on his gambling, he would for a while until the next time. The cycle would repeat itself, and life went on.
However, when I was eighteen, my mom died in a freak boating accident during a family outing to the lake, and everything changed. Utterly miserable in his grief, my dad started drinking a lot and crying a lot, two things he hadn’t often done before. His gambling problem escalated, and that was putting it mildly. Really, it more like spiraled out of control.
Within six months, we lost our spacious suburban Detroit home where I’d lived my entire life. My dad’s business folded next, putting several dozen people out of work, including my dad. At that point, he, my three younger brothers, and I moved to a tiny, three-bedroom apartment in the city, in a safe-ish but definitely less-than-ideal neighborhood. I dropped out of junior college where I’d been getting my prerequisites out of the way, intending to eventually transfer to a university to study business administration.
For a while, despite our new very humble apartment home, things actually improved a bit. My dad had no money to gamble with and not much to drink with, and I stayed at home with him just like he was a small child, in order to supervise him and make sure that he didn’t fall off his new positive path by heading out to the track, the baseball stadium, or bars that held poker games in the back. These were all places where he liked to gamble. During this time, we lived on public assistance.
After a few months, despite the fact that his drinking and gambling problems were better, it became clear that my dad couldn’t work. He alternated spending days in bed, nearly mute, with days of pretty much just wandering around the apartment, clutching pictures of my mom, crying.
I took him to counseling appointments that didn’t help. Various medications didn’t help. Pleading with him to try to pull it together and get well for our family didn’t work. Neither did outright begging. After one particularly heartfelt, tearful, pleading speech I’d made to him, he’d literally thrown himself at my feet, sobbing, asking me to please just help him. But, although absolutely brokenhearted, I just hadn’t known how.
Not knowing what else to do and knowing that someone had to support our family, especially with three young boys in the picture, I’d discontinued our social assistance payments and went to work, getting a job as a secretary during the daytime, and another as a diner waitress at night.
The oldest of my three little brothers, Kevin, who’d been just thirteen at the time, had gotten a job stocking the cooler and shelves at a tiny corner store for a few hours after school every day for four dollars an hour cash under the table.
With me now gone all the time, it wasn’t long before our dad gotten back on the bottle and back into gambling, using his new monthly social security disability checks for his depression to finance both of those things. I didn’t see him much, and when I did, he was usually in his favorite recliner, either drunk or crying, and oftentimes both. I began to feel that I didn’t know him anymore. Long gone was my handsome, laughing, bear of a father. In his place was a gaunt, babbling, gray-haired old man.
I more or less made peace with things, telling him that if he couldn’t help our family, to at least just please do no active harm, never placing any bets he couldn’t cover with his monthly disability check.
Sometimes he adhered to this rule and sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he came home begging for a few hundred dollars to “get the bookie off his back,” saying that he might get “roughed up” if I didn’t help him. Not wanting this to happen, I always did help him, though usually not without losing my cool and yelling like my mom had often done.
We pretty much even got into the same cycle that the two of them had repeated for decades, with me taking my mom’s role as yeller, and my dad at times fighting but usually just promising to change and “cool it” on the gambling.
Sometimes he’d even bawl like a baby and beg for my forgiveness, saying that he knew he’d “ruined everything,” speaking so loudly and passionately that his vodka-scented breath would ruffle my bangs. When he did this, with tears streaming down the burst capillaries in his ruddy cheeks, it was hard for me to continue to yell. I usually just hugged him and
walked him over to his recliner, telling him that he could make a fresh start. Tomorrow would be better.
It never was better, at least not for long, because one thing he never did beg me for was for rides to local gamblers anonymous and alcoholics anonymous meetings. They were both actually held in a building just a few blocks from our apartment building, definitely within walking distance. But, because my dad had a bum knee that bothered him sometimes. Not wanting this to ever be an excuse to not go to the meetings, I’d told him that I would come right home from work, any time of day or night, short notice no problem, to give him a lift to a meeting in my car.
I told him I’d even walk him in and then wait outside so I’d be right there to give him a ride back home. Not one time did he take me up on this. He did, however, frequently ask for rides to his favorite poker-playing bar. Sometimes I gave in, and sometimes I didn’t. It usually depended on how beat-down I was feeling and if I had strength left for an argument.
My dad’s own brother, who was our only non-nuclear family relative, once advised me in regards to my dad to just “cut him loose” and “make him fend for himself.” Uncle Steve had said, “That’ll make him snap out of it, Tara. You’ll see. Make him fend for himself on the streets for a few weeks, and he’ll come back home a changed man, ready to work and get back on track.”
I highly, highly doubted that, thinking that more than likely, turning my dad out on the streets would just lead to long-term homelessness, maybe even immediate injury and death. Not to mention that I couldn’t have turned my dad out on the streets even briefly, even if I’d thought Uncle Steve’s plan would work.
Despite everything, I still loved my dad fiercely, even if that love sometimes felt funnily buried, and just the thought of him spending even a single night on the streets, homeless, maybe sleeping behind a dumpster, always quickly brought tears to my eyes. I knew I could never do it.
Periodically, maybe every few months, Uncle Steve would send a bit of his very limited income, usually a hundred dollars or so, to help out the family, and these checks always came with notes urging me to “try some tough love” on my dad and “turn him loose.” I always crumpled these notes and threw them in the trash, not even acknowledging them when I sent handwritten thank-you notes to Steve for the money.
Things continued on the same way for years. I firmly settled into the role of parent of everyone in the household, with my dad being a “child” along with my three younger brothers. Mercifully, although they definitely weren’t perfect little angels, my brothers were good, sweet, hardworking boys for the most part, and they didn’t give me too many problems.
They didn’t fight among themselves too often, particularly for three boys who shared one bedroom. They did okay in school and usually did their assigned chores around the apartment without having to be hassled.
I gave them frequent hugs and praise like our mom would have; I went to all their parent-teacher conferences, baseball games, and school activities; and I helped them deal with their grief about our parents as best I could. At no point did I ever really have time to deal with my own grief. Running a household and working sixty hours a week, I rarely ever even had time to sit down.
In the present, six years after my mom’s death, even as profoundly exhausted as I felt for a twenty-four-year-old, I still had hope for the future, my future specifically, and I even had something of a tentative plan. When only my youngest brother, Joey, who was currently ten, remained in the house, I’d go back to college to finish getting my degree in business administration.
With only two “children” to look after and feed at this time, Joey and my dad, I’d be able to scale back my work hours in order to attend classes. Then, once I’d earned my degree, I’d get a good, decently-paying job somewhere outside of Detroit. Maybe even in a whole other state. I’d get a house for Joey and myself, and I’d get my dad a modest apartment, still looking after him but while distancing myself and Joey from the sad, depressing mess of his life.
I’d visit him frequently, though, and I’d also hire a caretaker to check in on him once a day and make sure that his apartment was picked up and that he had a home-cooked meal.
With my oldest younger brother, Kevin, now eighteen and out of high school, and with the next brother in line, Derek, now fifteen, I’d be able to execute my plan in just three years, when Derek went off to college, which he was intent on doing.
Then, Joey would be thirteen, and I’d go back myself, guessing that I’d probably finish when Joey was sixteen or seventeen. Since he’d likely go to college, too, I figured I’d probably only have him in the house for a couple of years after my long-awaited new job and big, grand move to a house in the country.
Then, as much as I’d miss all my brothers, I’d be free as a bird as far as caretaking went. Once again, as it had been before my mom had died, my life would be my own. I couldn’t wait. I imagined traveling frequently, and having time to tend a huge garden in the backyard of my country home. I imagined maybe I’d even be able to have some real semblance of a love life. It would certainly be about time, since I figured I’d be thirty-two or so when all this glorious new freedom happened.
This was my plan, though as of late, my dad had been seemingly determined to throw a wrench in everything, making daily life exceptionally difficult, and making me wonder if I’d live to see all the boys grown and out of the house without first having a complete nervous breakdown.
Several months earlier, my dad met some “really good guys” who’d supposedly given him a “big line of credit” for sports gambling. Despite my best efforts to stop things, things had quickly gotten very out of hand. I’d come home one night to find the apartment completely ransacked and several thousand dollars of my mom’s jewelry, which I’d always refused to sell no matter how tough times got, gone.
Later, it had come to light that the “really good guys” my dad had met had demanded payment for their “big line of credit.” My dad had done the ransacking of our own apartment. He’d sold my mom’s jewelry.
A few weeks later, he’d ransacked the apartment again, clearing out the rest of the jewelry I’d hidden in a carefully-concealed safe. The whole safe was actually itself gone, as well as our TV, my brothers’ computers and video game equipment, and my own laptop. Some of my nicest clothes and shoes were gone as well. Even our microwave was gone.
Utterly livid, I’d yelled at my dad, crying with rage at the same time. I’d threatened to do as Uncle Steve had suggested for years, and turn him out on the streets. My dad had cried, writhing on the floor like a toddler, drunk, telling me that some “really bad guys” had been about to “half kill him” if he didn’t “pay up.”
He was sorry. He was so, so sorry. He was wetting-my-socks-with-his-tears sorry. He was going to change. For real this time, he really was. He was going to become a different man. The old man, the man he’d used to be. He’d never steal from our family again. I’d told him that he hardly could, since we now had nothing left to steal. In the end, I’d forgiven him. I’d let him stay.
Things had settled down for a couple of weeks, but then, my dad had come home bruised and bloodied, face a mess of purple and red, and he’d confessed that he hadn’t been able to quit gambling. Now he owed the “really bad guys” a hundred thousand dollars, the most he’d ever owed on a gambling debt in his life. They’d “roughed him up” to “encourage” him to come up with the money within twenty-four hours. If he didn’t, if he didn’t come up with every cent, they’d kill him.
Immediately, I’d called Kevin, telling him to take the younger boys to a hotel and stay there with them until further notice. Hoping that I sounded convincing, I explained that Dad was finally ready to quit drinking cold turkey, and that “things weren’t going to be pretty” for a few days while he detoxed at home. Kevin had sounded skeptical but had agreed to take the boys to a hotel, to my extreme relief. I just didn’t want any of the boys anywhere around while I tried to stop the thing my dad claimed was now inevitabl
e.
I’d wanted to go to the police, but he’d said we absolutely couldn’t.
“That will get you and the boys killed, too, Tara, no doubt. These guys we’re dealing with… they don’t play that way. When they need to deal with someone, they don’t stand for the family calling the police. You and the boys won’t be able to run or hide then. Then, we’ll all be dead.”
Trembling with panic and terror, I suggested that we all flee, the whole family. “We’ll just get in my car and drive. We’ll go all the way down to Florida or something. We’ll just disappear.”
My dad just shook his head, sinking into his favorite armchair, looking oddly calm for a man in his situation. “They’re already watching the apartment and have been for days. We can’t get out now. They’ll see. They’ll stop us.”
That night, I hardly slept a wink, tossing and turning, frantically wondering what I should do. I didn’t know anyone who’d be willing and able to float me a loan of a hundred thousand dollars, or even anything remotely close.
The next morning, my dad, on the other hand, seemed like he’d actually slept well. When I entered the sunlit kitchen, he was standing at the stove in a tattered blue robe, actually flipping pancakes.
After giving me a smile, he asked me if I wanted a few. “I’m going to make some sausage and eggs, too. You in?”
Somehow horrified by his calm demeanor, I didn’t respond, and he continued.
“You could help by squeezing us some fresh orange juice if you want.”
Further horrified, I could only sputter for a few moments. “Dad. If the twenty-four hours they gave you to come up with the money started when they beat you up yesterday, that means we only have a few hours before they come to collect. We’ve got to think of some way—”
“They know I don’t have the money, sweetie.” After flipping a pancake onto a plate, my dad glanced over at me with bright sunlight illuminating the bruises all over his face. “They know they’re not coming to ‘collect.’ I think they more gave me these last twenty-four hours just so I could make my peace, have a good last meal, and say a goodbye or two if I wanted. They’re really not terrible guys. They’re just businessmen.”